At 30 hours you qualify as a full time employee under ObamaKare, so what are companies going to do to avoid the fine and not pay for health insurance...those that can will cut back on people's hours.

Under the system Darden is testing, employees are to be scheduled for no more than 28 hours each week. They can run over that if things get busy, but Darden acknowledged they are not supposed to exceed 30 hours.

At a new Olive Garden in Stillwater, Okla., former busboy Keaton Hasty said employees were routinely limited to 29 1/2 hours.

Libs sure are backwards, talk bad about the company who hires people, employs people, gives people paycheckes, etc.

LOL. Never mind those ungrateful employees who are giving up half their waking lives for an employer who may think so little of them as to cut their hours short so as to minimize money "wasted" on the welfare of their workforce.

In this employer-centric dream world, the employer is the king of the castle; lord of the fiefdom; and employees are utterly expendable and replacable serfs who should bow and scrape to their benefactors.

Lords and serfs. A state of being separated by only a shaky gray line from masters and slaves. A world made in the image of Mitt Romney's "business experience".

In this employer-centric dream world, the employer is the king of the castle; lord of the fiefdom; and employees are utterly expendable and replacable serfs who should bow and scrape to their benefactors.

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The boss gets to make the rules...yes. Remember nobody is forcing you to take a job at company X. If the boss says you have to wear a blue shirt every day you do it. You don't wear a white shirt.

Don't like the boss or the company, you're free to leave. You want to survive at your company, you do your job and listen to the boss. That job wasn't created to make you happy. Want more money become a more valuable employee with talents that nobody else has.

"Never mind those ungrateful employees who are giving up half their waking lives for an employer who may think so little of them as to cut their hours short so as to minimize money "wasted" on the welfare of their workforce."

People do not go into business to employ people for the good of society, they go into business to make money, as much money as possible. The benefit of this behavior is it requires labor to achieve it, thus people benefit in the form of jobs. A job is a priviledge, not a right, if you don't want your job, someone else will gladly take it. Money generated by the business is the businesses money, its what it exists to do, its not there to make money just to provide for their employees wefare. That's why the market approach is so good, other businesses can lure employees with better pay/benefits, etc.

"Never mind those ungrateful employees who are giving up half their waking lives for an employer who may think so little of them as to cut their hours short so as to minimize money "wasted" on the welfare of their workforce."_________________________________

Never mind those kind benevolent business owners who risked their money to give these folks jobs.

These same kind thoughtful people come up with plans to keep those poor helpless folks employed. If the meals get too expensive folks will stop coming, the mean cruel vicious customers, don't they know people are depending on them. There should be no limit to how much they will pay for dinner. Clods all of them, the employees should tell them too, that should help business.

We have problems when morons that think simplistic talking points are actually solutions and that big brother is the solution to any but a very small set of problems, and those morons are in charge.

What you are inherently saying is that taxes on business are inherently a form of national sales tax. Maybe those in favor of the national sales tax will oppose Mitt.

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Not really as a sales tax is pushed at the point of sale for a percentage of the good purchased. What you have here is a tax $3,000 per employee, so it's not a percentage but a fixed number.

But in the end even if we did switch to a national sales tax to repalce the income tax the Republicans and Socialists would still fight over what the rate should be. One side might want 10% while the other 20%.

But don't worry, Obama said it was a penalty not a tax...until it was litigated, then he called it a tax in court briefings...then once SCOTUS ruled, he said it was a penalty again, not a tax. He flips and flops more than any President.

LOL. Never mind those ungrateful employees who are giving up half their waking lives for an employer who may think so little of them as to cut their hours short so as to minimize money "wasted" on the welfare of their workforce.

In this employer-centric dream world, the employer is the king of the castle; lord of the fiefdom; and employees are utterly expendable and replacable serfs who should bow and scrape to their benefactors.

Funny.

I met with an immigrant yesterday that use to work in the kitchen for a local eatery.

She now owns three restaurants of her own and she mentioned that she was concerned about the expenses she might face under the new rules. I told her that thankfully, she does not employ enough people that it will matter - but it obviously would hurt her business if she opened a 4th shop under the same TIN and that took her over 50 employees.

So I must ask, is she one of those king of the castle types or is she the lowly serf in your opinion?

Here's a little lesson in reality and adult life, KKjb44, or young man:

All employee benefits from all employers are provided only to employees who reach a minimum level of employment. In many companies, any employee who is part-time and works less than 20 or 25 hours a week is excluded from all benefits, not just health insurance.

Another way companies can avoid paying benefits is by hiring contract labor, rather than full-time employees. For a long time, wonderful high tech companies like Cisco and Microsoft kept full-time people on contract, meaning they didn't have to support their health insurance, didn't have to contribute to unemplpoyment insurance or disability insurance pools, didn't have to pay into FICA, thus diverting funds that should support Social Security and Medicare into their own coffers, didn't have to pay oevrtime or give vacation, and didn't have to follow internal procedures or state law when they wanted to fire the person in quezstion: you're a contractor, you're gone. And you have no right to unemployment, Social Security, etc. Nor if you were a vctim of racial, sexual, religious, or other discrimination by the company or its management in determining who was to be let go, did you have any recourse in the courts.

I think you probably approve of this approach, but eventually it was cut back whern the courts and the government found that the only difference between these contractors, whose contracts were automatically renewed year after year, and the full-time employees, was that the employer skipped its obligations under the law. Now, a contract has to last for more than a year, or be extended a second year, for it to be per se a questionable practice aimed at defrauding the government.

The practice still goes on -- companies ignore it, they use shorter contracts, they rotate different people so as never to reach the point of legal limits.

This is nothing new, and it has been resorted to enormously since Bush and the RepubliKans and the banks almost destroyed the American economy.

So 30 hours or you are not covered under ObamaCare sounds to me like a huge gift to employers, since most of them have to provide health insurance to part time employees who work far less than that per week.

But don't let something like reality or long-term practices which result in billions that should be in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds not being there, just blame Obama.

When your trust fund runs out, or you graduate from school (hope you learn that "C" and "K" are not interchangeable before you do), you may get some real world experience and realize that perhaps this was another place where Obama made a mistake, trying to build consensus with radicals extremists posing as Konservatives.

But in the end even if we did switch to a national sales tax to repalce the income tax the Republicans and Socialists would still fight over what the rate should be. One side might want 10% while the other 20%. _____________________________

I am not sure you are right.

I think once the tax hit everyone the tax debates would transform big time.

The argument now is not about taxes, but about how the collecting of revenue for government is best done, one side wants to shape and punish the other to grow the sector and collect (in general there are a boatload of exceptions but that is the published positions)

The boss gets to make the rules...yes. Remember nobody is forcing you to take a job at company X. If the boss says you have to wear a blue shirt every day you do it. You don't wear a white shirt.

Enter the labor union.

Don't like the boss or the company, you're free to leave. You want to survive at your company, you do your job and listen to the boss. That job wasn't created to make you happy. Want more money become a more valuable employee with talents that nobody else has.

There's being a team player and there's being a conformist robot. I know the difference. I'm also fortunate to be in a position where one can distinguish themselves through individual style and unique talent and I take advantage of that. Unfortunately this is not the case for the great majority of jobs.

So yeah, for the great majority of jobs where you shelve everything that makes you unique at the door, the boss makes all the rules. So it's no surprise that we see CERTAIN PEOPLE <looking upthread> who get a power trip about being the kind of asshat boss that lords over their employees and looks for ways to screw them out of benefits, without a second thought for the labor force on which their personal success is borne.

America is full of people that, lacking certain opportunites (many of which they are exempted from at birth) and a measure of good fortune, are stuck working in jobs they hate so they can put food on the table. Rather than toiling at lifelong labors of love, bringing what they love to the world, they become tasteless cogs in a machine that grants them just enough leisure to keep the spark of hope alive.

What a crappy way to live. And there, but for the grace of God, go I. The difference between people like me and certain others is that I stridently maintain that it shouldn't have to be that way.

A job is an agreed upon transaction between a service provider and a consumer of those services.

In a healthy market, each party should be able to negotiate the terms of this transaction such that it is mutually agreeable. But by your reckoning this is all very one-sided. Just throw the serfs a pittance as they sit there with mouths open like baby birds; not like they're worth the bother. After all, they have a job. What else should they want, right?